How the Doctrine of the Incarnation Shaped Western Culture

How the Doctrine of the Incarnation Shaped Western Culture PDF Author: Patricia Ranft
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0739174320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
In recent years numerous scholars in disciplines not traditionally associated with theology have promoted an interesting thesis. They maintain that one particular Christian doctrine, the Incarnation, had an inordinate influence on the shape of Western culture. The doctrine, they say, was so radical that it mandated an epistemological break with pagan society's perception of the universe and forced Christians to form a new culture. As medieval society worked out the consequences of the doctrine, it gave birth to those attitudes, institutions, and actions that define modern Western culture. The claims are well argued, but it is a historically untested thesis. How the Doctrine of Incarnation Shaped Western Culture is a response to the situation. It investigates whether the presence of the doctrine had the definitive effect on Western culture that so many scholars claim it did. It searches early Christian and medieval sources for evidence and concludes that the doctrine had a dominant effect on the developing culture. No other idea was as omnipresent or pervasive in Western society during its formative stage as the Incarnation doctrine. The doctrine was influential in the establishment of every major facet of Western culture. Its paradox, irrationality, and juxtaposition of opposites created a tension that cried out for resolution, and society responded accordingly. The ideas within the doctrine acted as catalysts for cultural change. As a result, the West developed its most characteristic traits and forged a path that was uniquely its own.

How the Doctrine of the Incarnation Shaped Western Culture

How the Doctrine of the Incarnation Shaped Western Culture PDF Author: Patricia Ranft
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0739174320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
In recent years numerous scholars in disciplines not traditionally associated with theology have promoted an interesting thesis. They maintain that one particular Christian doctrine, the Incarnation, had an inordinate influence on the shape of Western culture. The doctrine, they say, was so radical that it mandated an epistemological break with pagan society's perception of the universe and forced Christians to form a new culture. As medieval society worked out the consequences of the doctrine, it gave birth to those attitudes, institutions, and actions that define modern Western culture. The claims are well argued, but it is a historically untested thesis. How the Doctrine of Incarnation Shaped Western Culture is a response to the situation. It investigates whether the presence of the doctrine had the definitive effect on Western culture that so many scholars claim it did. It searches early Christian and medieval sources for evidence and concludes that the doctrine had a dominant effect on the developing culture. No other idea was as omnipresent or pervasive in Western society during its formative stage as the Incarnation doctrine. The doctrine was influential in the establishment of every major facet of Western culture. Its paradox, irrationality, and juxtaposition of opposites created a tension that cried out for resolution, and society responded accordingly. The ideas within the doctrine acted as catalysts for cultural change. As a result, the West developed its most characteristic traits and forged a path that was uniquely its own.

How the Doctrine of Incarnation Shaped Western Culture

How the Doctrine of Incarnation Shaped Western Culture PDF Author: Patricia Ranft
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739174339
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
In recent years numerous scholars in disciplines not traditionally associated with theology have promoted an interesting thesis. They maintain that one particular Christian doctrine, the Incarnation, had an inordinate influence on the shape of Western culture. The doctrine, they say, was so radical that it mandated an epistemological break with pagan society’s perception of the universe and forced Christians to form a new culture. As medieval society worked out the consequences of the doctrine, it gave birth to those attitudes, institutions, and actions that define modern Western culture. The claims are well argued, but it is a historically untested thesis. How the Doctrine of Incarnation Shaped Western Culture is a response to the situation. It investigates whether the presence of the doctrine had the definitive effect on Western culture that so many scholars claim it did. It searches early Christian and medieval sources for evidence and concludes that the doctrine had a dominant effect on the developing culture. No other idea was as omnipresent or pervasive in Western society during its formative stage as the Incarnation doctrine. The doctrine was influential in the establishment of every major facet of Western culture. Its paradox, irrationality, and juxtaposition of opposites created a tension that cried out for resolution, and society responded accordingly. The ideas within the doctrine acted as catalysts for cultural change. As a result, the West developed its most characteristic traits and forged a path that was uniquely its own.

Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship

Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship PDF Author: Joel B. Green
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 1611649668
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Designed to empower preachers as they lead congregations to connect their lives to Scripture, Connections features a broad set of interpretive tools that provide commentary and worship aids on the Revised Common Lectionary. This nine-volume series offers creative commentary on each reading in the three-year lectionary cycle by viewing that reading through the lens of its connections to the rest of Scripture and then seeing the reading through the lenses of culture, film, fiction, ethics, and other aspects of contemporary life. Commentaries on the Psalms make connections to the other readings and to the congregations experience of worship. Connections is published in partnership with Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Connections: Year A, Three-Volume Set

Connections: Year A, Three-Volume Set PDF Author: Joel B. Green
Publisher: Presbyterian Publishing Corp
ISBN: 164698031X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1930

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Book Description
Designed to empower preachers as they lead congregations to connect their lives to Scripture, Connections features a broad set of interpretive tools that provide commentary and worship aids on the Revised Common Lectionary. This nine-volume series offers creative commentary on each reading in the three-year lectionary cycle by viewing that reading through the lens of its connections to the rest of Scripture and then seeing the reading through the lenses of culture, film, fiction, ethics, and other aspects of contemporary life. Commentaries on the Psalms make connections to the other readings and to the congregation's experience of worship. This set contains all three volumes for Year A. Connections is published in partnership with Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. This eBook set contains Year A, volumes 1, 2, and 3.

Art and Mysticism

Art and Mysticism PDF Author: Louise Nelstrop
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351765140
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
From the visual and textual art of Anglo-Saxon England onwards, images held a surprising power in the Western Christian tradition. Not only did these artistic representations provide images through which to find God, they also held mystical potential, and likewise mystical writing, from the early medieval period onwards, is also filled with images of God that likewise refracts and reflects His glory. This collection of essays introduces the currents of thought and practice that underpin this artistic engagement with Western Christian mysticism, and explores the continued link between art and theology. The book features contributions from an international panel of leading academics, and is divided into four sections. The first section offers theoretical and philosophical considerations of mystical aesthetics and the interplay between mysticism and art. The final three sections investigate this interplay between the arts and mysticism from three key vantage points. The purpose of the volume is to explore this rarely considered yet crucial interface between art and mysticism. It is therefore an important and illuminating collection of scholarship that will appeal to scholars of theology and Christian mysticism as much as those who study literature, the arts and art history.

Gastro-modernism: Food, Literature, Culture

Gastro-modernism: Food, Literature, Culture PDF Author: Derek Gladwin
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1942954697
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Gastro-Modernism ultimately shows how global literary modernisms engage with the food culture to express anxieties about modernity as much as to celebrate the excesses modern lifestyles produce.

Where Mortals Dwell

Where Mortals Dwell PDF Author: Craig G. Bartholomew
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 144123196X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 595

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Book Description
Place is fundamental to human existence. However, we have lost the very human sense of place in today's postmodern and globalized world. Craig Bartholomew, a noted Old Testament scholar and the coauthor of two popular texts on the biblical narrative, provides a biblical, theological, and philosophical grounding for place in our rootless culture. He illuminates the importance of place throughout the biblical canon, in the Christian tradition, and in the contours of contemporary thought. Bartholomew encourages readers to recover a sense of place and articulates a hopeful Christian vision of placemaking in today's world. Anyone interested in place and related environmental themes, including readers of Wendell Berry, will enjoy this compelling book.

Powers, Principalities, and the Spirit

Powers, Principalities, and the Spirit PDF Author: Esther E. Acolatse
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467449377
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Among the many factors that separate churches in the West from those of the global South, there may be no greater difference than their respective attitudes toward supernatural “powers and principalities.” In this follow-up to her book For Freedom or Bondage? African theologian Esther Acolatse bridges the enormous hermeneutical gap not only between the West and global Christianity but also between the West and its own biblical-theological heritage.

Sacred Views of Saint Francis

Sacred Views of Saint Francis PDF Author: Cynthia O. Ho
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1950192776
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Overlooking Lago di Orta in the foothills of the Northern Italian Alps, the Renaissance-era Sacro Monte di Orta (a UNESCO World Heritage site) is spectacle and hagiography, theme park and treatise. Sacro Monte di Orta is a sacred mountain complex that extolls the life of St. Francis of Assisi through fresco, statuary, and built environment. Descending from the vision of the 16th-century Archbishop Carlo Borromeo, the design and execution of the chapels express the Catholic Church's desire to define, or, perhaps redefine itself for a transforming Christian diaspora. And in the struggle to provide a spiritual and geographical front against the spread of Protestantism into the Italian peninsula, the Catholic Church mustered the most powerful weapon it had: the widely popular native Italian saint, Francis of Assisi.Sacred Views of Saint Francis: The Sacro Monte di Orta examines this important pilgrimage site where Francis is embraced as a ne plus ultra saint. The book delves into a pivotal moment in the life of the Catholic Church as revealed through the artistic program of the Sacro Monte's twenty-one chapels, providing a nuanced understanding of the role the site played in the Counter-Reformation.The Sacro Monte di Orta was, in its way, a new hagiographical text vital to post-Tridentine Italy. Sacred Views provides research and analysis of this popular, yet critically neglected Franciscan devotional site. Sacred Views is the first significant scholarly work on the Sacro Monte di Orta in English and one of the very few full-length treatments in any language. It includes a catalogue of artists, over one hundred photographs, maps, short essays on each chapel, and longer essays that examine some of the most significant chapels in greater detail.

Passion of the Western Mind

Passion of the Western Mind PDF Author: Richard Tarnas
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307804526
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'Westt's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.